GUILD MEMBERS AT REUTERS AUTHORIZE STRIKE
Members of the Newspaper Guild of New York at Reuters Group Plc in the United States have voted overwhelmingly to authorize union leaders to call a strike if necessary in the face of continual company demands for reduced compensation after more than two years of contract negotiations.
The tally was 301-to-4. The vote, delivered at membership meetings this week at several U.S. locations of the London-based news and information company, gives New York Guild President Barry Lipton, in consultation with other union leaders, the power to call a strike at a time of their choosing.
No strike date has been set, and the two sides have scheduled numerous bargaining sessions through late March.
"There are no immediate plans for a strike and we hope it will be possible to avoid one,” said Lipton. "But the overwhelming nature of the vote should send a strong message to company managers. Our members adamantly reject demands that they work for less and they’ve empowered us with a union’s ultimate weapon to back it up.”
Managers of Reuters America LLC, the company’s main U.S. operating subsidiary, want to gut job security and cut company pension contributions and increase health care costs, which, when combined, would cost employees more than 3 percent of annual pay. For a five-year contract that would begin March 1, 2003, management has proposed a year-long wage freeze, a 1 percent raise for the year ended Feb. 28 and 2 percent raises in each of the next three years. Given the proposed benefit cuts, the package would leave employees with a net loss in compensation.
While the cuts already have been imposed on many nonunion workers at Reuters, CEO Tom Glocer and other top executives of the company have seen their cash compensation rise substantially in recent years, despite a multi-year decline in company revenues.
The two sides are also at odds over employment security and a small number of other key issues. The current contract expired on Feb. 28, 2003, but its terms remain in effect.
The New York Guild, Local 31003 of the Communications Workers of America, represents nearly 500 print, television and photo journalists, technicians and other employees at Reuters.
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2/18/05